Search results for "RAYS"

Accretion in young stars: measure of the stream velocity of TW Hya from the X-ray Doppler shift

2015

High-resolution X-ray spectra are a unique tool to investigate the accretion process in young stars. In fact X-rays allow to investigate the accretion-shock region, where the infalling material is heated by strong shocks due to the impact with the denser stellar atmosphere. Here we show for the first time that it is possible to constrain the velocity of the accretion stream by measuring the Doppler shift of the emitted X-rays. To this aim we analyzed the deep Chandra/HETGS observation of the accreting young star TW Hya. We selected a sample of emission lines free from significant blends, fitted them with gaussian profiles, computed the radial velocity corresponding to each line, and average…

X-ray emission mechanisms in protostellar jets

2005

Prompted by the recent detection of X-ray emission from Herbig-Haro objects, we studied the interaction between a supersonic jet originating from a young stellar object and the ambient medium; our aim is to investigate the mechanisms causing the X-ray emission. Our model takes into account the radiative losses from optically in plasmas and Spitzer's thermal conduction including saturation effects. We explored the parameter space defined by the density contrast between the ambient medium and the jet and by the Mach number, to infer the configurations which can give rise to X-ray emission. From the models, we derived the X-ray emission as it would be observed with Chandra/ACIS-I and XMM-Newto…

Accretion Shocks in Young Stars: the Role of Local Absorption on the X-ray Emission

2015

We investigate the X-ray emission from accretion shocks in classical T Tauri stars, due to the infalling material impacting the stellar surface. Several aspects in both observations and models of the accretion process are still unclear: the observed X-ray luminosity of the post-shock plasma is below the predicted value, the density vs temperature structure of the shocked plasma, with increasing densities at higher temperature, is opposite of what expected from simple accretion shock models. To address these issues we performed numerical magnetohydrodynamic simulations describing the impact of an accretion stream onto the stellar surface and considered the local absorption due to the surroun…

Magnetic activity and the solar corona: first results from the Hinode satellite

2007

The structure, dynamics and evolution of the solar corona are governed by the magnetic field. In spite of significant progresses in our insight of the physics of the so- lar corona, several problems are still under debate, e.g. the role of impulsive events and waves in coronal heating, and the origin of eruptions, flares and CMEs. The Hinode mis- sion has started on 22 september 2006 and aims at giving new answers to these questions. The satellite contains three main instruments, two high resolution telescopes, one in the optical and one in the X-ray band, and an EUV imaging spectrometer. On the Italian side, INAF/Osservatorio Astronomico di Palermo has contributed with the ground-calibrati…

THE INTERACTION OF THE STELLAR HIGH ENERGY RADIATION WITH THE CIRCUMSTELLAR MEDIUM

The purpose of this Thesis is to study how stellar high energy radiation affects exo- planetary atmospheres. High level of stellar high energy, X-rays and (vacuum end extreme) ultraviolet radiation may prevent planets’ habitability and limit the width of the habitability zone. Such radiation may ionize a star surrounding, affecting the chemistry and thermal bal- ance. The effects of X-rays can be wide ranging or relatively local. Soft X-rays are absorbed closer to the source than X-rays with energy greater than 1 keV. The absorption cross-section of hard X-rays are generally very small, so that such radiation may affect a whole galaxy to some extent. The product of photo-ionization is a cas…

Spectral Analysis of LMC-X2 with XMM/Newton

2008

We present the results of the analisys of an archival observation of LMC X-2 performed with XMM/Newton. The spectra of this source has never been analyzed with a high precision instrument before. The spectrum of the source can be fitted with a blackbody with a temperature 1.5 keV plus a disk blackbody at 0.8 keV. We argue that the emission of this source can be straightforwardly interpreted as a sum of the emission from a boundary layer between the NS and the disc and a blackbody component coming from the disc itself. The detection of the O VIII emission line (and the lack of detection of lines in the iron region) can be due to the fact that the source lies in the Large Magellanic Cloud.

Effects of radiation in accretion regions of classical T Tauri stars

2019

Context. Models and observations indicate that the impact of matter accreting onto the surface of young stars produces regions at the base of accretion columns where optically thin and thick plasma components coexist. Thus, an accurate description of these impacts is necessary to account for the effects of absorption and emission of radiation. Aims. We study the effects of radiation emerging from shock-heated plasma in impact regions on the structure of the pre-shock down-falling material. We investigate whether a significant absorption of radiation occurs and if it leads to a pre-shock heating of the accreting gas. Methods. We developed a radiation hydrodynamics model describing an accreti…

Accretion onto Neutron Stars: spectral and timing investigation of Low Mass X-ray Binaries

2021

X-ray bursts and burst oscillations from the slowly spinning X-ray pulsar IGR J17480-2446 (Terzan 5)

2011

The newly discovered 11-Hz accreting pulsar, IGR J17480-2446, located in the globular cluster Terzan 5, has shown several bursts with a recurrence time as short as a few minutes. The source shows the shortest recurrence time ever observed from a neutron star. Here we present a study of the morphological, spectral and temporal properties of 107 bursts observed by the Rossi X-ray Timing Explorer. The recurrence time and the fluence of the bursts clearly anticorrelate with the increase in the persistent X-ray flux. The ratio between the energy generated by the accretion of mass and that liberated during bursts indicates that helium is ignited in a hydrogen-rich layer. Therefore, we conclude th…

Size of coronal structures in active stellar coronae from the detection of x-ray resonant scattering

2005

We have analyzed high-resolution X-ray spectra of a large sample of active stars observed with the High Energy Transmission Grating Spectrometer on Chandra in order to investigate the properties of optical thickness of the coronal plasma. The analysis of Lyman series lines arising from hydrogen-like oxygen and neon ions shows in the coronae of the active RS CVn-type binaries II Peg and IM Peg significant decrements in the Ly alpha/Ly beta ratios as compared with theoretical predictions and with the same ratios observed in similar active binaries. We interpret these depletions in terms of resonance scattering of line photons out of the line-of-sight. These observations present the first stro…